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After much deliberation, Ivan-2 asks to be put back in a tank.
“But why would you want that, my child?” The caretaker’s eyestalks slowly darken, signaling distress. “Aren’t you happy out here with—with your lessons and your books and all your little friends?”
“It’s boring,” Ivan-2 explains patiently. He’s worked it all out in his head. “Every day is exactly same. And as for my little friends—I’m the only second iteration still around.” Not that he’d been particularly close with the rest of them, but the caretaker won’t remember that.
The eyestalks are nearly black now. “I’m so sorry to hear that, my child,” the caretaker says, with all evidence of sincerity. “But no. You can’t go back in a tank.”
Apparently Ivan-2’s request is distressing enough that his sponsor requests a meeting.
‘Sponsor’ is a polite term. ‘Owner’ might be more accurate. ‘Powerful client that the facility is desperately eager to please at all costs’ also works.
Unsha cuts a striking figure, his broad body clothed in a stark black suit that makes the facility’s stark white walls almost painfully bright by comparison. They stare at each other across a plain white table for long moments, Ivan-2 patient, Unsha thoughtful.
“Tired of life already?” Unsha inquires at last, tapping ash off a large cigar. Non-smoking rules don’t apply to powerful clients, apparently.
“It’s boring,” Ivan-2 says, launching into his argument all over again. If the facility won’t grant his request, maybe he can persuade his sponsor to. “Every day is exactly the same.”
“And?” Unsha says. His hand is suddenly motionless, cigar suspended in mid-air. Ivan-2 has the uncomfortable sense of being scrutinized, examined for flaws. Flawed iterations are retired, which isn’t what Ivan-2 wants. Not exactly.
“And in a tank, I’ll be unconscious and won’t have to actually experience any of it,” Ivan-2 continues. It’s a logical argument. Coherent. They don’t really need him to be conscious for all the poking and prodding, do they? And he’s memorized all the right answers to the psychological evaluations, so it’s not as if the caretakers will learn anything new from making him take them again and again.
“The whole point of this place is for you to experience things,” Unsha informs him.
“Experience what? There’s nothing here,” Ivan-2 says. Every day the same lessons, same food, same walls. His hands clench into fists in his lap. His breaths feel short in his throat. “What’s the point?”
Unsha smiles at him. “Insurance,” he says.
Ivan-2 looks up the word in the dictionary, one of the lone bookshelf’s worth of books provided to the residents for recreational purposes. The recreational lounge has long exhausted its interest for him, being yet another white room filled with white furniture in a facility made up of white rooms filled with white furniture. Though, the lounge is larger than most of the other rooms in the facility, and the furniture makes at least a feeble gesture toward comfort and relaxation. He walks past Mizi-9 drawing, Sua-4 silently watching TV, and Till-18 scribbling angrily on one of the sterile white walls with bright red crayon.
Of the two definitions that the dictionary provides, neither of them explain a thing. Definition 1: To guarantee another against loss by a specified contingency or peril. Definition 2: A means of guaranteeing protection or safety. Definition 3: in gambling: a side bet that a player in blackjack may place when the dealer's first face-up card is an ace.
A strange word, when Unsha is free to come and go as he pleases, and Ivan-2 has never even seen the sky. The facility doesn’t believe in windows.
Shouting rises behind him when the caretakers come to haul Till-18 away for retirement. Ivan-2 uses the noise as a cover for carefully tearing out the page with the word insurance on it. Later, in his room, he reads the definition over and over, tracing each word with his finger.
This is the closest he’s come to an answer to why he exists, and it’s useless. What did Unsha mean?
His daily music lesson grinds to a halt when the instructor throws all four hands in the air. “No, no, no!” they cry. “It’s wrong! All wrong!”
Ivan-2 stops singing. It’s not like Black Sorrow is a particularly difficult song. He knows the notes, has the lyrics memorized, and he’s on tempo.
“I’m sorry,” he says reflexively.
The music instructor doesn’t notice; they’re too busy throwing a fit again. “What am I even doing here?” they mutter, all four hands yanking at their long brown mane. “Useless, it’s useless!”
Ivan-2 waits for the music instructor to say something useful. When they don’t, he prods him with a polite, “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t!” the music instructor cries. “You have no heart, no soul—nothing! Hollow, like a jug!”
Hollow. Ivan-2 feels himself shudder at the word. He doesn’t know what face he’s making right now, but whatever it is, it feels wrong. His body feels wrong. Like a jug.
Whatever his face is doing, it jolts the music instructor out of their tantrum. Engendering unnecessary emotional distress in the residents is frowned upon; they might lose their job, or at least receive a stern talking-to.
“There, there,” they say hastily, patting him on the head. “It’s not your fault.”
What a pointless thing to say. How can anything be his fault when he’s never allowed to do anything? The stupidity of it is enough to jolt Ivan-2 back to himself.
“Thank you,” he says, trying to sound grateful.
“Perhaps what you need is—ah, yes! Yes!” The music instructor waves all four skinny arms in excitement. “Sit down and listen to Black Sorrow as it was meant to be sung!”
Ivan-2 sits. The music instructor fusses importantly about their tablet, then points triumphantly at the practice room wall.
The wall goes dark. Then, a floating stage comes into focus, calling to mind planetary rings. Silvery bubbles drift upwards in the background. There are two figures standing on the rings, but the camera is focused on only one of them: a tall man in black, his gloved hands slowly stroking up a mic stand as the intro music begins. He starts to sing. His voice is familiar, and so is the song: You who shines, I stand next to you…
The camera zooms in and Ivan-2’s hands clench in his lap. He knows that face.
That’s his face.
That familiar voice is his voice.
Ivan-2 sits in a daze as the melody winds around him, sinks under his skin.
All too soon, the video ends. It takes all the self-control Ivan-2 possesses to not grab the tablet out of the music instructor’s hands and smash the replay button.
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Ivan-2 says, amazed by the steadiness of his voice. And then, “May I have a copy?”
Loading the residents’ tablets with additional educational materials isn’t against the rules for the facility’s instructors, but Ivan-2 still feels like his hands are full of contraband when he returns to his room that night. Something illicit and old-fashioned from long-dead Earth, like cigarettes, or alcohol. An intoxicant, to be sure.
In his narrow little room, Ivan-2 sets his tablet on the desk and hunches over it, starting the Black Sorrow video. He stares at the face that is his face, listens to the voice that is his voice. One hand wraps around his throat. He doesn’t understand. Same face, same voice, same song, and yet—why did it sound so different coming from the man on the screen.
Why did it sound like the lyrics actually meant something, as opposed to being just another string of pretty words?
As soon as the video ends, he replays it. Just one more time, that’s what Ivan-2 thinks to himself. He loses track of how many times he taps the replay button.
Suddenly, the lights flicker, the signal to get ready for bed. Ivan-2 blinks and straightens in his chair. His back aches from hunching over for so long; he must have been watching and rewatching the video for hours. He feels like he could rewatch it for hours more.
An unfamiliar voice rises from the tablet. Ivan-2 looks down. He recognizes the face on it, but not the song. The music instructor must have loaded more videos on his tablet, but why is Till-21 here?
The camera swings across the dark stage to a figure in white. A familiar voice joins the song. Ivan-2 hunches over the tablet again, transfixed by the sight of himself singing.
By the sight of himself throwing his mic aside. Crossing the stage. Pressing his mouth to Till-21’s mouth (disgusting), strangling Till-21 (understandable), and then dying in a hail of gunshots, blood pouring from a softly smiling mouth.
The lights go out completely. Shit. He lost track of time. The caretakers will be coming around soon, checking that all the residents are in bed as they’re supposed to be. Ivan-2 hastily turns off the tablet and shoves his chair back, stumbling into bed and pulling the blankets up over his shoulders so it won’t be obvious that he hasn’t changed out of his day clothes yet. He forces his breathing to slow down as he waits for the slight pneumatic hiss that signals one of the caretakers peering in through his door.
The hiss comes and goes, shortly followed by a muffled commotion as Till-21 is discovered breaking curfew yet again. What a nuisance. Ivan-2 tunes out the noise.
More important are the pieces clicking into place. The first definition of insurance: To guarantee another against loss. The man in the video must be Ivan-2’s original, the source of his genome. Ivan Prime. He’d died, and Ivan-2 was supposed to be a—a replacement, or something. An organ donor. A body double. And something must have gone wrong, with the plan or Ivan-2, or else he’d be out there, outside the facility, instead of stuck inside its endless white walls.
Ivan-2 has always felt like a poor imitation of a person, and now he knows why: because he is.
In this dream, he sees Ivan Prime walking away. He’s dressed in blood-stained white, striding determinedly into the darkness. Ivan-2 chases him, frenzied with a sudden desperation. But no matter how hard he runs, he can’t seem to get any closer, and soon enough, the darkness swallows Ivan Prime whole, leaving Ivan-2 alone.
Another meeting with his sponsor. Ivan-2’s been behaving erratically, apparently. Spending less time in the recreation lounge and more time alone in his room, curled around his tablet.
Unsha lights up a fresh cigar with familiar, deliberate motions. “They searched your room,” he says, without preamble.
As if Ivan-2 doesn’t already know. He tries to look contrite anyway.
“You’ve been watching videos of Ivan,” Unsha continues.
Of course Ivan Prime would be just Ivan to Unsha. Ivan-2’s mouth tastes like Unsha’s cigar smells.
“The music instructor thought it might improve my performance,” Ivan-2 replies.
“And have you learned anything?”
He feels the weight of Unsha’s gaze like a hand on the back of his neck.
“I don’t know,” Ivan-2 says eventually. He knows that this is an unsatisfactory answer, but he doesn’t have a better one. His hands clutch each other nervously in his lap. He doesn’t want to be retired. He wants to see Ivan Prime again.
“A pity,” Unsha muses. “He was such a promising pet. Can’t understand why he’d throw it all away. Round 6 should have been an easy win.”
This is the most context he’s ever gotten for either of the videos. Ivan-2 can hardly breathe. He stays quiet, hoping Unsha will say more.
Instead, a black tablet skims across the table. Ivan-2 catches it, stares at Ivan Prime smiling enigmatically back at him from the screen.
“I put a little extra on there for you, see if it helps,” Unsha says, smoke drifting from his wide mouth. “I want an answer, next time.”
“An answer to what?” Ivan-2 asks. He doesn’t even know what questions he should be asking.
Unsha doesn’t respond.
“Stop, stop,” the music instructor says. “Better, but—argh! Wrong, still wrong!”
Ivan-2 stops singing and lowers his arm. This time, he doesn’t say he’s sorry.
“I don’t understand,” Ivan-2 says, trying to keep his voice even. He’s been watching the videos. He’s read all the interviews that Unsha added to his tablet, and pored over all the report cards and photoshoots and news articles too. He’s been practicing Black Sorrow, relentlessly. He has Ivan Prime’s performance memorized, each gesture, each expression, the lift and fall of each and every single fucking note. What is he missing?
“You must feel the music, feel it! You don’t feel it!” The music instructor taps Ivan-2’s chest for emphasis. “What are you even singing for, hm?”
Why they haven’t retired this music instructor in favor of one actually capable of teaching, Ivan-2 doesn’t know. “Musical education is considered essential for the residents’ psychological development and well-being.”
The music instructor throws up all four hands in attitude of despair.
“Just—tell me what I need to do.” The words come out more desperate than Ivan-2 intended. Tell him how to sing this song like Ivan Prime. Tell him what he’s missing, tell him how he’s like a jug.
The music instructor gives him a desultory pat on the head. “You work hard, very hard,” they say. “What a good child. But it’s no use.” They sigh heavily, all four arms dangling limply from sagging shoulders.
Melodramatic piece of shit. Ivan-2 grits his teeth and tries to look sad. He doesn’t want to be written up for erratic behavior again. He wants this music lesson to be over so he can go back to tracing the shape of Ivan Prime’s mouth with his fingertips. “Can we try it one more time?”
The second time’s not any better than the first, but at least the music instructor keeps their mouth shut about it.
In this dream, he sees Ivan Prime’s body laid out on an operating table. His eyes are closed. Ivan-2 wipes the blood away from his mouth, still curved in that soft smile. He peels back his clothes, layer after layer of white cloth. He picks up a knife and drives it deep into the flesh of Ivan Prime’s belly, carving a Y across his pale torso. Slowly, reverently, he peels back the flaps of skin, laying bare the still organs within.
Ivan-2 reaches into Ivan Prime and plucks out the stiff cold muscle of his heart. He holds it tenderly, cupped in hands stained red to the wrists with blood.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Ivan-2 says to Ivan Prime. He doesn’t respond. “You don’t need it anymore.”
He brings the heart to his mouth. Ivan-2’s jaw aches from chewing through the muscle, so much tougher than the nutritionally balanced slop the residents are fed three times a day. Every bite tastes like copper and meat and life, like everything he’s ever dreamed of, or never knew he could dream of.
By the end, Ivan-2 is shaky with arousal, and still desperately, ravenously hungry.
“You don’t need it anymore,” he says, to Ivan Prime’s still, beautiful face. “I do. I need it.” He doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince.
Ivan-2 reaches in for more.
“You’re not worth it,” he tells Till-32. Till-32 doesn’t respond.
The Till iterations are always being retired and brought out again as the scientists try to tweak his genome. Keep the genius, lose the temper. They’ve gone overboard with the docility this time, though. Till-32 doesn’t do much other than sit and stare at the wall. The papers and pencils placed hopefully before him remain untouched.
He’s less than a doll, because at least a doll can blink and smile and repeat a few canned phrases. Till-32 can’t even do that much. Ivan-2 can’t imagine anything in Till-32, in any iteration past, present, or future, that would be worth dying for.
He tells Till-32 this. Till-32 doesn’t respond.
Till-32 doesn’t even respond when Ivan-2 hits him.
It feels good in an ugly way, and encouraged by this—and by the knowledge that he’s definitely going to be punished for this, and so might as well earn it—Ivan-2 hits him again. And again. He fists a hand in Till-32’s silver hair and slams his face into the table; once, twice; there, see, a smear of blood on the paper, and that’s the closest Till-32’s ever going to get to exhibiting the artistic genius that the scientists are so desperate to keep. Worthless. Hyuna-23 is shouting at him to stop and he’s scared Sua-4 out of the room completely. Mizi-11 is crying.
“You’re not worth it,” Ivan-2 says, and keeps saying, even as the caretakers drag him away.
He has a history of good behavior, so beating the shit out of Till-32 only nets Ivan-2 a week of solitary confinement. That’s fine with him. It’s quiet in here. He lies down on the padded floor and closes his eyes, conjuring up the videos behind his eyelids. He’s memorized every second of them now; traced each curve of Ivan Prime’s face with eyes and tongue and fingers.
The face that is not his face.
The voice that is not his voice.
The song that is not his song.
No matter how many times he watches those videos, he feels no closer to understanding. How it is that the song that Ivan Prime sings is somehow different from the song that Ivan-2 sings, even though the melody and lyrics and rhythm are exactly the same. Different. Better. Not like a jug.
Ivan-2 imagines Ivan Prime standing in his cell. His appearance wavers; white, then black, then white again. Ivan-2 imagines him singing, a private performance.
What are you even singing for? he thinks, willing Ivan Prime to respond. To say something. Anything. He doesn’t care if it’s real or true or a lie.
He’s aware that he created this vision, but it doesn’t make his longing any smaller.
Ivan Prime, as always, doesn’t respond. He’s not even looking at him. Even in Ivan-2’s imagination, he’s always turning away, turning toward someone else.
His sponsor visits him in his cell. So much for one full week of solitary.
The caretakers dress him up for it, strapping his arms down with a straitjacket and clipping it to spidery metal limbs that unfold from the ceiling.
The first thing Unsha says is, “Get that shit off him.”
The caretakers hastily undress Ivan-2 again, leaving him kneeling on the floor in his facility-issued day clothes. Ivan-2 keeps his gaze fixed on the floor. Contrite, he reminds himself. He needs to seem sorry. Remorseful. Like he actually feels bad for what he did to Till-32, when they’ve probably already retired him and moved on to Till-33.
“So,” Unsha says, once they’re alone again. “What was that about?”
Ivan-2 weighs his answer. Which one has the least chance of leading to him being retired? “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Instead of responding, Unsha muses, “Ivan was always particular about that one. The original one, Till. Urak’s pet. Never understood it.”
Ivan-2 doesn’t understand it either. But he doesn’t say that.
“I’ll ask again,” Unsha says. “Have you learned anything?”
“No.” It’s not at all what Ivan-2 meant to say, but he can’t think of any other answer. He’s learned what it’s like to want to smash someone’s face in out of frustration, and what it feels like to actually do it. He’s learned how easy it is to make another person bleed. That’s what he’s learned. Nothing about Ivan Prime. Nothing important.
“Nothing at all.”
The flat tone of Unsha’s voice makes something frantic bubble up through Ivan-2’s chest. He doesn’t want to be retired. Not yet. Not until he understands.
He forces the words out as calmly as possible. “I’m trying.” The excuse sounds thin, even to his ears. “He’s—hard to decipher.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Unsha says.
Ivan-2 opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. “Please,” he manages to squeeze out, the word mangled by fear. Shit. He’s lost control of the situation, insofar as he ever had any control over it. He doesn’t even know what to say next. “Don’t—don’t retire me.”
“And why not?” At least Unsha doesn’t sound appalled by the nonsense flailing out of Ivan-2’s mouth. Or bored. Ivan-2 plunges onward.
“I can figure it out,” Ivan-2 says. He has the strangest sense that he’s lying, which is nonsense. He hopes it’s nonsense. He’s not sure what he’s going to do with himself if it’s not. “I just need—more time. And information.” What else can he say to win Unsha over? “I want to understand him, too.”
“Hm,” is all Unsha says. And then, “She always said I was too soft on him.” He gestures at someone Ivan-2 can’t see. The cell door hisses open. “Have something for me next time, or I might have to terminate this investment.”
He walks out, leaving Ivan-2 all alone. The door stays open.
Ivan-2 feels lightheaded with relief. And dread. If desperation made it easier to comprehend Ivan Prime, he’d have written books on the man already. Retirement is surely just one more sponsor visit away.
But at least he’s alive. At least he can see Ivan Prime’s face again.
“Better!” the music instructor says, clapping all four hands. “Yes, better! Again, from the top!”
As far as Ivan-2 can tell, he sounds exactly the same as he did last time, and all the times before that, but then, he always knew the music instructor was full of shit.
In this dream, Ivan Prime is crossing a rain-slicked stage, but he’s crossing it to Ivan-2. When he pulls Ivan-2 into a forceful kiss, Ivan-2 kisses him back. He doesn’t stop even when Ivan Prime’s hands wind around his neck, as if this union, this intersection of their bodies, will let him bite all of Ivan Prime’s secrets out of him: What are you even singing for? Why him? Why death? As if Ivan-2 could suck down his soul as it leaves his body, swallow it whole and let it fill him up like a jug.
Even as Ivan Prime’s hands loosen around his neck, Ivan-2 kisses him again and again, desperate to taste something other than blood and a song he doesn’t know how to sing. He clutches at Ivan Prime as if he could hold Ivan Prime against him forever.
But Ivan-2’s hands can’t hold him; they go nerveless, fingers loose. When he falls, Ivan Prime’s lightless black eyes are fixed on something that Ivan-2 cannot see. He smiles softly, but it’s not for Ivan-2. It never is.
The lights come on in his room.
Ivan-2 presses his eyes shut, chasing another dream, another mouthful of blood.